Dust on the Bible

Dust on the Bible begins in the fall of 1944 and comes to a close the following spring, as the Second World War is ending. Lilleitha Chavis, a twelve-year-old girl in sixth grade, is the primary character, but the story moves out to include the members of her large extended family, all of whom have stories as well.Lily attempts to understand, on the one hand, the abstract concepts of death and eternity and, on the other hand, the concrete details surrounding her father and his death in prison. She experiences death in several ways. A neighboring boy is killed fighting in Luzon. She's there when Clio, the cow, after having broken her leg, is shot by her uncle. Another death hovers over the book--that of her father, Albert Chavis. A complex and tangled history emerges as we learn the particulars of the marriage between Lily's mother Florence and her father, of the decision Florence made to turn in her husband to the Feds for making moonshine, and of his death while in a Federal penitentiary.The book traces Lil's concern about God and the church--her belief at first that God will speak to her and can help her not only understand death and eternity, but can bring her peace, followed by her impulsive move during a revival to join the church and her subsequent decision to "un-join."We see the backbreaking labor that is the Reinharts' life--the endless round of plowing and planting, of cooking and cleaning up, of feeding the mules and milking the cow, of tending the chickens and preparing for the garden. They bake biscuits daily to eat with fatback and cane syrup; their clothes are sewed at home from empty feed sacks. They tote water from the well, wash clothes by hand, cook on a wood stove. These are poor people, without much education, whose wisdom resides in their experience and their ability to extrapolate from it, whose joy comes from music and family.